We used the DM books (from Memoria Press) this year (Greeks and Romans.) My ds (7th grade) REALLY liked them. I also used HO for the same grade level a few years ago with my dd. It was okay, better than the average textbook, but "textbookish" none the less. I tried to use the workbooks, but they were pretty dry and mostly consisted of just regurgitating the material. DM is much meatier and conveys the information in a much more interesting way. Half way through the year, Memoria published workbooks that really helped him learn the material better. We just concentrated on the comprehension questions which usually require quite a bit of thought. Next year he will be doing the DM Medieval book.

A couple of books we have found very helpful for helping my dd 15 with anxiety...Similar story to what you posted about your dd. These books have lots of practical strategies to help them cognitively manage their fears and anxiety. http://www.amazon.com/My-Anxious-Mind-Managing-Anxiety/dp/1433804506/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366138558&sr=8-1&keywords=anxiety+teen http://www.amazon.com/Helping-Anxious-Child-Step---Step/dp/1572245751/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366138608&sr=1-1&keywords=helping+your+anxious+child

Thanks very, very much!!

I am an independent consultant for Autism Spectrum Disorders. My background is special education. Occasionally, I am called in to do a diagnostic assessment, or provide consultation or training with school staff or families. Both of those used to make up the bulk of my workload. But four years ago, I went back to direct service teaching children and adults Social Thinking/ social skills. Love it! I work about 8 hours a week (sometimes more.)

I needed that today. Thanks!

Love finding good stuff for our iPad. Thanks for the post!

Bedtime. It is a huge punishment if they can't listen to something when they go to bed. We established it by accident when they were babies and toddlers and we would play music while they fell asleep. I found that the more they listened, the more they wanted to listen and started doing so on their own. It seemed easier with tapes and CD's for little ones to control their own content. For my younger ones now we will play something from my ipod touch or the iPad and we have a wireless speaker (this one.) They will always fall asleep to whatever they are listening to, so the next night we will start it on the last thing they remember. I miss tapes because it was so much easier to find the right spot! I do have one dd who will stay awake just to listen and have more trouble falling asleep. She listens a lot on her own during the day or she often chooses to go to bed early so she can have listening time. When my older dc were young, we weren't coming and going all the time, and I would have listening time in the afternoon while the babies were napping. They would be occupied and I could get something done as well. Usually 30-40 min was good, unless they were really into it and then it could really go on. :) In some seasons, especially when I was pregnant and couldn't catch my breath to do hardly any read aloud time, we would listen while we ate lunch. The car has been great on trips (once or twice a year), but not otherwise.

When my older dc were small, I was in your shoes. We did many read alouds, but I often didn't feel that I could tackle many of the classics because often our read aloud time was hit and miss. I wanted them to have consistent time to listen to the more advanced language and to be able to rewind and listen again. I agree with a previous poster...audiobooks, audiobooks, audiobooks! Without audiobooks I don't know if my dc would have embraced the classics like they have. When they were 5-6 yo, they started listening to the Narnia series and Andrew Lang's Fairy Stories. By the time they were in 4th grade they were listening to Swiss Family Robinson, Treasure Island, Little Women, Anne of Green Gables, etc. They will listen to the stories over and over, and when they got older they wanted to read them as well. Whatever meanings and language were over their heads, they eventually figured out. I found that around 5th grade and up, they don't even flinch when I give them a classic to read, and I think that those early experiences were essential to my high school students who are now willing to tackle Homer, Aristotle, Polybius, etc.

If Siri is reading it, you can slow it down. Unfortunately, Siri won't read from Kindle or Nook apps. But you can use the VoiceOver feature under Accessibility Settings to read from iBooks. I have played around with it, but we haven't used it functionally.

I can't answer that one. My dd HATED Bookshare so much I let it expire and didn't do anything further with it.

Someone else asked more about Siri and Learning Ally. This was my response: Learning Ally is all human read books. There isn't any print, so I check out the books from the library and she reads along as it is read to her. It has helped to improve her fluency. You can slow the voice down using the app. She just recently has been able to follow along at normal speed. Sometimes there is a reader that we don't care for, but overall, we have been pleased. It is MUCH better than the computer generated reading from Bookshare, there is so much more variety over others such as Audiobooks or Librivox, and it saves SO much money over using Audible or something similar. We were advised by a teacher for the visually impaired to work extensively on strengthening her auditory skills by speeding the voice up so she is able to listen and comprehend at a faster rate. I incorporate that into her history as she listens to Story of the World. It isn't read as well as Jim Weiss, but it gets the job done;) She listens and then does a narration. There is a setting for Siri to have her read to you. Go to Accessibility...then turn Speak Selection to ON...You can adjust the Speaking Rate in that as well. She can go pretty fast and we have ours set pretty far off center towards the turtle. You can also have it highlight words as it is spoken. We will occasionally use this feature. We keep Speak Auto-text and VoiceOver set at OFF. After you have your settings in place, all you do is highlight what you want her to read and it will give you a pop-up menu with Speak as an option. Another feature that I like is Guided Access. Sometimes if she is working on something that is particularly challenging, she will tend to procrastinate and "wander" into other apps and waste time. Then I just put it into Guided Access and force the issue.

Someone on the General Ed board asked the question,"Has the iPad revolutionized anything (or everything) about your homeschool?" I posted this response which I had been meaning to post on this board for awhile just in case someone might find it helpful. It has become indispensable for my dd (4th grade) who has a reading (and spelling) disability! Her level of independence has increased substantially and has allowed her to work on grade level. It has given me 2 hours of my day back! The best approach I have found to help her is to try to separate the necessary skills required for a task and use the iPad to simplify the task. So for example, if she is working on Vocabulary, I try to eliminate the actual reading and have her rely on her auditory skills which are very strong. If she is working on composition, we try to eliminate having to spell. We isolate spelling and work on that for a minimum of 40 min daily. We also isolate reading. She listens (and reads along) with Story of the World. I don't what we would do without it at this point! Siri is her new best friend. There are other voices in each app, but she has figured out how to get Siri to read everything to her. If she needs help spelling a word, she can speak it and Siri will spell it for her. I am still looking for a dictionary app that works like a Franklin Speller. I import her WWE assignments into Speak It and it will read it to her. She does her narration by dictating it on the Notes app (to help with her spelling) and then copies it. We take a photo of anything on a page that she needs to read (for example the last assignment of every Wordly Wise lesson is a lengthy excerpt which she needs to read) and the Prizmo app will scan it and then read it aloud to her. Wordly Wise also has an audio file to introduce the vocab for each lesson online. I downloaded them all and put them in itunes. She will listen to it multiple times (and read along) in the course of each weekly lesson. Her visual memory is very compromised and she practices spelling high frequency words daily on Spelling City. One of the best purchases we have made (other than the iPad itself) is a membership to Learning Ally. She listens to books read aloud and we are working on building on her reading fluency by having her read while she listens. With the Learning Ally app, we can slow down the speech if she is working on reading fluency or speed it up past normal speech when we are working on auditory skills. Story of the World is available on Learning Ally. So far anything I have wanted is there. She had exhausted all of the options at our local library. This is a much cheaper option over purchasing audio books. We also useAudiobooks. Quizlet has also relieved some of her dependence on me. We also use GoodReader and Dropbox extensively for our pdfs. Eventually, I plan to train her to use it for notetaking and I have looked at AudioNote. I am working on organization skills with her and we put her assignments in the Reminder app. For fun she is enjoying Stack the States. Khan Academy has been great for my jr high and high school students.

Learning Ally is all human read books. There isn't any print, so I check out the books from the library and she reads along as it is read to her. It has helped to improve her fluency. You can slow the voice down using the app. She just recently has been able to follow along at normal speed. Sometimes there is a reader that we don't care for, but overall, we have been pleased. It is MUCH better than the computer generated reading from Bookshare, there is so much more variety over others such as Audiobooks or Librivox, and it saves SO much money over using Audible or something similar. We were advised by a teacher for the visually impaired to work extensively on strengthening her auditory skills by speeding the voice up so she is able to listen and comprehend at a faster rate. I incorporate that into her history as she listens to Story of the World. It isn't read as well as Jim Weiss, but it gets the job done;) She listens and then does a narration. There is a setting for Siri to have her read to you. Go to Accessibility...then turn Speak Selection to ON...You can adjust the Speaking Rate in that as well. She can go pretty fast and we have ours set pretty far off center towards the turtle. You can also have it highlight words as it is spoken. We will occasionally use this feature. We keep Speak Auto-text and VoiceOver set at OFF. After you have your settings in place, all you do is highlight what you want her to read and it will give you a pop-up menu with Speak as an option. Another feature that I like is Guided Access. Sometimes if she is working on something that is particularly challenging, she will tend to procrastinate and "wander" into other apps and waste time. Then I just put it into Guided Access and force the issue.

It has become indispensable for my dd (4th grade) who has a reading (and spelling) disability! Her level of independence has increased substantially and has allowed her to work on grade level. It has given me 2 hours of my day back! The best approach I have found to help her is to try to separate the necessary skills required for a task and use the iPad to simplify the task. So for example, if she is working on Vocabulary, I try to eliminate the actual reading and have her rely on her auditory skills which are very strong. If she is working on composition, we try to eliminate having to spell. We isolate spelling and work on that for a minimum of 40 min daily. We also isolate reading. She listens (and reads along) with Story of the World. I don't what we would do without it at this point! Siri is her new best friend. There are other voices in each app, but she has figured out how to get Siri to read everything to her. If she needs help spelling a word, she can speak it and Siri will spell it for her. I am still looking for a dictionary app that works like a Franklin Speller. I import her WWE assignments into Speak It and it will read it to her. She does her narration by dictating it on the Notes app (to help with her spelling) and then copies it. We take a photo of anything on a page that she needs to read (for example the last assignment of every Wordly Wise lesson is a lengthy excerpt which she needs to read) and the Prizmo app will scan it and then read it aloud to her. Wordly Wise also has an audio file to introduce the vocab for each lesson online. I downloaded them all and put them in itunes. She will listen to it multiple times (and read along) in the course of each weekly lesson. Her visual memory is very compromised and she practices spelling high frequency words daily on Spelling City. One of the best purchases we have made (other than the iPad itself) is a membership to Learning Ally. She listens to books read aloud and we are working on building on her reading frequency by having her read while she listens. With the Learning Ally app, we can slow down the speech if she is working on reading fluency or speed it up past normal speech when we are working on auditory skills. Story of the World is available on Learning Ally. So far anything I have wanted is there. She had exhausted all of the options at our local library. This is a much cheaper option over purchasing audio books. We also use Audiobooks. Quizlet has also relieved some of her dependence on me. We also use GoodReader and Dropbox extensively for our pdfs. Eventually, I plan to train her to use it for notetaking and I have looked at AudioNote. I am working on organization skills with her and we put her assignments in the Reminder app. For fun she is enjoying Stack the States. Khan Academy has been great for my jr high and high school students.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you! Ah ha...now I get it.

Thanks VaKim. So if you post on the Classifieds does the post automatically go to the For Sale board here http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/forum/15-for-sale/? I am confused why there are both boards. Is there an explanation of the new ones somewhere that I am missing?

I used to be able to post items for sale on the board, but I can't since the board change (which I love :) ) I can't post! The tab in the upper right hand corner tells me so. I know I am probably just missing something somewhere. I have emailed the moderator several days ago, but haven't heard back. Can anyone help me or give me some insight? Thanks!

Gap has 18 Slims (w/ adjustable waist) online only and they are long. You can't buy them in the stores. If you sign up for emails, every once in awhile they have 30% off and they will frequently have 25% off. I got some great deals just a month ago on jeans and khakis. It is the only brand of pants that have fit him for the past two years. Good luck :)

Ida Elisabeth by Sigrid Undset. She wrote another fabulous read, my favorite triology of all time...Kristin Lavransdatter. I prefer the translation by Tiina Nunnally. The first one is a quicker read. To read the Kristin, you kind of need to make a commitment and know that you will need to persevere through the first part of the first book. After that, you will be hooked.

Please don't have weird thoughts about mine! I REALLY would like to change it. I posted here awhile ago. http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/showthread.php?t=161456

Thanks everyone! Bummed that I didn't think about it BEFORE my huge RR order!

Does anyone know where I find clear page covers for doing workbook pages? I am looking for the ones that fold over the page, not pockets for putting the pages inside.

Don't miss the National Caves! They are our family favorites. http://www.nps.gov/jeca/index.htm http://www.nps.gov/wica/index.htm Needles Highway through the Hills with lots of stops along the way is a great tour. At that time of year, Spearfish Canyon will be gorgeous with fall colors! Have a great trip!

We have completed Mapping the World by Heart and Runkles (combined with World Geography by Teacher Created Resources,) and I have dabbled with Trail Guides, but I would like to find a good spine or online course for cultural geography that would be appropriate for 8-10th grade. What would you suggest?

Kendrick